Speaker:Senior Pastor Brent Calhoun (Wednesday 7:30PM Service)From Pastor's Notes:Making up your mind to have a relationship with someone is not as hard as you may think!Pastor asked us all the question, Do you want to make your relationships work? We confirmed a yes answer and Pastor proceeded to tell us how. He shared two stories about two co-workers in his past that were not really that great to be around, or work with. Pastor told us how he won them over with kindness.He gave us these two tips:1) Study the other person in your relationship (and this can be your spouse, or co-worker). Find out what they like or dislike.2) Win them with acts of kindness. Sowing positive actions on your part will end up creating or harvest of positive actions that you can reap from.If you send positive messages (by way of positive actions such as acts of kindness) the receiver will send back positive feedback in such ways has being your friend or helping out in areas where you will need them."You need a mindset 'I will make it work', and then make it work!" - Pastor Brent CalhounBasics of CommunicationSender (or Source) is the person trying to express themselves. The receiver is the person listening to what is being conveyed to them. The message is the most important part and is often times changed from what is conveyed to what is understood.There is a coding process. The sender can contaminate the message because of poor expression, or lack of effective communication skills. A sender could be tired but fail to communicate this feeling. The sender could also fail at giving all the information necessary for a receiver to understand what is being said the way the sender wants it to be understood.Pastor shared a example of a old story about Joe and Jane. Joe wants to come home from work and eat a quick supper and then finish some work that he has to do for the office the next (such as a presentation). However, the way Joe sends the message to his wife Jane is misunderstanding. Joe never told Jane that he had the work to do. He just assumed that you knew or understood.On Jane's side of the conversation, she had the kids sent to a baby sitter and prepared a very romantic dinner for Joe when he got home. When Joe just wanted to quickly eat and go to his office to finish up his presentation, Jane took this behavior, or action as a message saying, she was unattractive, and Joe did not want to spend the evening with her.As you can see, this is a perfect example of miscommunication and misunderstanding.Proper communication:

Be attentive to your coding or decoding errors, we all send confusing messages, and we all misunderstand.Spend 3 seconds before you process the message, and spend 3 seconds processing the message before you make a mistake in the interruption.Choose your words and your emotions based upon the receiver.Sometimes it is necessary for the receiver to check with the source to verify you understand correctly. In other words, provide feedback such as, 'is this what you are telling me?"SSL: Spousal Selective Listening is a real problem in every marriage!To overcome this follow these tips:

Reduce the barriers.

Plan the process of communication out thoroughly.

Learn that sometimes we put things into "pdf", and there is no program to change that into a windows format.

Show Respect:Pause before replying, this shows you are processing not dismissing. Don't interrupt as this shows you are jumping to conclusions. Hear the person out, and ask for clarification before making a conclusion.We hope that you are enjoying this series, and we are looking forward to having be with us in service for the finale of this series.Pastor will be completing this series on April 30th, which two Wednesdays from now. The reason for this gap is because this Wednesday (April 23) we are having our monthly Youth Service, which encourage everyone to out and spend this time worship and preaching/teaching with our Youth Pastors Jon and Shannon Ryder.